Michael Kern

Michael Kern (3 May 1958-) was the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States from 2014. Under President Garrett Walker, he was nominated as Secretary of State, but a controversy over possible anti-Semitic remarks made in a newspaper back in 1978 led to his withdrawal from the competition and Catherine Durant instead being nominated.

Biography
Michael Kern was born on 3 May 1958 in Colorado, and he attended Williams College in Massachusetts. There, he was the editor of the student newspaper, the Williams Register, alongside future conspiracy theorist Roy Kapeniak, and they expressed their anti-establishment views together. In September 1978 he was the editor of the newspaper when an article condemning Israel's status in Palestine as an "illegal occupation" at the time of the ongoing Camp David Accords was released, although he claimed that he did not write a word of it.

Kern had an undergraduate degree from Williams College and graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a law degree, and he entered politics as a senator for Colorado with the US Democratic Party. In January 2013, President Garrett Walker nominated Kern as Secretary of State instead of congressman Frank Underwood like he promised him, so Underwood decided to get revenge against Walker. Using his newspaper contact Zoe Barnes, he had her publish a story that questioned if Kern was the writer of the 1978 article that condemned Israel. In addition, Underwood contacted his friend Dennis Mendel at the Anti-Defamation League, which condemned Kern's nomination due to anti-Semitism. Kern later struck back by saying that Palestine could not exist without Israel, which in turn prompted the ambassador from Jordan to condemn Kern. Kern decided to resign, ending his career and leaving Catherine Durant as the new Secretary of State.